By Lindsay Kimbrell
The hog debate has really gotten hot the last couple of months, and I don’t understand why. Since when did so many care about a feral hog?
But farmers and ranchers like myself do. We care about the damage they cause and the crops they destroy.
We’ve been trying for years in multiple ways to reduce the feral hog population on our farm, and it’s not working.
These hogs are ruining our farmland by roughing it up, digging up our crops, knocking down crops and just totally wrecking it.
We lost an entire 40-acre field that was planted with corn in just a matter of days.
Once we replanted the field, a trapper offered to stay up all night for multiple nights on a sort of “night watch” until the seeds sprouted. Once the seeds sprout, the threat is lowered, because the hogs only like the seeds.
We’re usually hog-free until the corn plants start putting on a cob. Then the feral hogs return, knock down plants and eat the corn, making a huge mess and of course cutting into our food supply and profit.
The cost of damage caused by feral hogs for our family farm? Tremendous.
On average, seed costs $250 per bag of corn, which will plant about three acres. The 40 acres of corn we lost cost us about $3,300. That expense grows with each acre they destroy.
That’s a lot of money a farmer like us will lose each year. And that doesn’t count the starter fertilizer that’s put out with the seed and the diesel used in the tractor that planted it.
We’ve tried several ways to stop the feral hogs, including the aerial method with helicopters and trapping.
Hunting from a helicopter, however, is difficult because some complain about the noise and you can’t hunt while flying over someone’s property without their permission.
Trapping was effective for a while, but it also has challenges. Theft of traps and wet ground made it hard for the trapper to check and bait the trap once it’s set.
Of course there are always people offering to ground hunt, but the idea of people we don’t know walking around our land with guns doesn’t seem safe. Many farms are leased, which means the farmer doesn’t own it. So for someone to hunt the land, it would require contacting the landowner, which sometimes is hard to do, as some owners don’t live in the state.
And feral hogs are smart. Once a mature hog has learned of a trap, has been shot at or harmed, they typically will move on, making them hard to keep in one area.
A 2004 survey conducted by Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service placed annual damage to agriculture in Texas at $52 million, with an additional $7 million spent by landowners to attempt to control the pigs and/or correct the damage.
There have been local and only temporary reductions in the wild hog population, but they continually come back and once again destroy our land.
They are unmanageable at present, which has proven to be a huge challenge for anyone who owns land and tries to earn a profit from it or just enjoy it.
Warfarin (Coumadin) would be an option for some farmers. The dosage used in hog bait would be one-fifth of the strength of over the counter rat bait, because hogs have a limited tolerance for the product.
What are we supposed to do? Let these animals continue to ruin our land and food supply?
Seeing a hog, an invasive species, in our field, eating the profit that feeds our kids, pays our bills, and keeps a roof over our head makes it hard to handle.
We don’t call this hunting. Hunting is something you do for food purposes or as a sport.
We call it pest control. That’s exactly what we want to do to the animals that threaten our food supply and our living—eradicate enough of them to matter.
After all, what’s more important, a wild hog or our food?
Lindsay Kimbrell and her husband, Todd, grow wheat and corn in Central Texas.
Great Article
Wild hogs are food!…poisoning our land is NOT a option…
I completely support getting rid of the feral hog. I think using warfarin (Coumadin) as a poison is opening a Pandora’s box. a solution that sounds easy and will initiate terrible natural consequences to the action .I have friends who hav e solved their hog prob lems in south Texas with 50 caliber guns. faster and does not endanger any other species of animals. don’t let the politicians sweet talk you, make them work for a better solution and find out who would be selling the warfarin to the state.
Carol, I completely understand / agree with most of your comment. But remember, warfarin can be purchased by anyone as rat bait/poison at five times the strength as that purposed for feral hog control. I don’t doubt that there are success stories with control by hunting and trapping, but state wide in Texas we are losing the battle.
Great article Lindsay!
I only have about 15 acres I was letting a neighbor use for hay but now the ruts are so deep, I almost flipped my tractor out there just mowing. It’s horrible. They are smart to the traps, after once…they won’t go near it, even if it’s full of corn, etc… for almost 20 yrs here, I never had a problem with them and I live right on the creek where they run. Now I can’t get anyone to hay my field. They don’t want to mess up their equipment. Have had several hunters, several catching them live n trying to make a living on them. The drop traps work fairly well. But something has got to give here. Taxes keep going up on property we can’t use anymore.
Why can’t the government allow land owners to purchase silencers for use with night vision without all the govt regulations we have to deal with….or other alternative methods of control…until a more long term solution is determined….
Buck, rifle suppressors are useful to help protect your eardrums but will create a loud supersonic crack down range. Use of subsonic ammo will eliminate down range noise. The popularly suppressed subsonic 300 AAC Blackout ammo isn’t considered a hog lethal round except at extremely short range. I’ve hog hunted too many nights to count with night vision and using proper hog hunting techniques with minimal success
Buck, you just can’t shoot enough to matter. Sounds like fun but that old sow have 20 pigs a year. So will her many thousands of sisters. Not all the pigs will survive but that’s why the population is growing
A .50 caliber weapon is fearsome indeed. Hitting them, however, is not the problem. Shooting enough to matter with hundreds of thousands of sows having 20 pigs a year is a math problem that will never add up. This invasive species with few natural enemies causes far more damage to the environment than this low dose chemical could even in the hyperbole of its opponents
“Poisoning our land” sounds like something a non-land owning city person would say. More then likely, hog control should be approached in a multi-faceted manner; trapping, poisoning, fencing and hunting should all be employed simultaneously. But even with that, if we are just able to reduce the hog population a small but it will seem like a victory.
I sell night vision equipment to lots of hunters that would love to be able to hunt these farms that are over run with hogs. I guess farmers just don’t want strangers on their land killing hogs.
Lindsay Kimbrell’s Table Topic on feral hogs article speaks to the concerns of all Texas land owners. The controversy surrounding using Warfarin as a poison bait is somewhat justified based on how it causes death. Warfarin is a well known rodenticide that causes death by thinning blood to the point of fatal hemorrhage. Time from consumption to death is dependent on the amount of poison consumed and can easily take three to five days. It’s easy to see how dead and dying hogs that have left the target property showing signs of hemorrhage could result in negative public perception.
I would like to offer a few observations and suggestions.
First, as this article states, no amount of killing hogs with firearms will put a dent in the hog population. Trapping hogs is expensive, time consuming and effective for a very short time as hogs quickly become trap shy.
Second, the push back against using a poison is being advocated by those that financially prosper from selling hog hunts or attempt to sell feral hog products. Let us also mention pseudo rabies or “mad itch” a terrible fatal disease suffered by dogs used to hog hunt. Shame on those that try to profit from the blight caused by the feral hog.
Third, the political aspects of this makes me sick. Sid Miller’s declaration of a “hog apocalypse ” using warfarin is uninformed grandstanding. I can’t believe I voted for him. I thought Rick Perry was bad. Disclosure: I’m a moderate republican and an Aggie.
The bill introduced by my friend Rep Lynn Stuckey and Sen Kirk Watson is just plain useless. Any research needed has been done. Most of what is needed to be known is available at
https://www.aphis.usda.gov/wildlife_damage/nwrc/publications/12pubs/fagerstone121.pdf
Fourth, control of feral hogs can be achieved by using a reliable poison. Sodium nitrite is the proven poison of choice. It causes acute asphyxia and a painless death within two hours. There is essentially no environmental impact. Suitable hoppers are developed. No baiting in east Texas where black bear exist as they can open heavy hoppers. Raccoons can open anything and will occasionally be lost to poison. There’s collateral damage with most every thing such as migratory birds and wind turbines.
Fifth, why the EPA approved warfarin based Kaput in January of this year is beyond me. But, the EPA’s Clean Water Rule should remind us all how inept government agencies can be.
There is a reasonable, humane feral hog poison available. I hope the Farm Bureau rethinks their support of warfarin and uses their resources to investigate sodium nitrite. The better poison.
Disclosure: I own several hundred acres in Denton and Montague counties. For the last 15 years I have hunted feral hogs night and day. Constructed, caught and killed many trapped hogs that “hog pick up people” wouldn’t pick up.
Spent what seems like forever repairing rooted up pasture and replacing damaged new grafted pecan trees.
A very well thought out argument Dr. Unnerstall. Let me hasten to say that TFB is certainly open to other control measures. My understanding is that sodium nitrite is still under study and I’ve been told that some of the preliminary results have been disappointing. However, when it’s available, it will be another tool in the box to control this invasive species. Your assessment of the damage of the species is hard to disagree with. Meanwhile, the problem is now. We have some farmers who can no longer plant corn at all specifically because of wild hog infestations.
Henry, perhaps you have “baited” me into a response to your suggestion that farmers “just don’t want strangers on their land killing hogs”. But here goes..
I have night vision equipment and firearms capable of killing hogs. I hunt only on my own property of which I know every square foot. I never attempt to shoot over one hundred yards. I’ve been doing this for quite a while. It still scares the heck out of me.
The reason is bullet over travel. I use .223 caliber and .300 AAC supersonic ammo, the minimal hog killing calibers. Many hunters use .308 caliber ammo. These calibers are flat shooting and have little drop even out to 600-800 yards.
Henry, so why would any sensible land owner allow strangers on their property shooting at running feral hogs in the middle of the night? I hope the answer is clear.
I believe Dr. Unnerstal’s comments are on target. I did some graduate school research on the subject and at this time sodium nitrite seems to be our best hope, but it is still in testing. I have been in communication with the TPWD biologists doing the testing and they believe it is the best solution. It is unfortunate, but this issue clearly puts many of us landowners in opposition with hunters(and ranchers wanting to lease to hunters). One expert told me the feral hogs “are spreading west at a rate of 70 mph down the highway in the back of someone’s trailer.” It is arguable that people have been to blame for the spread of feral hogs almost as much as the hogs themselves. I understand that Kansas was unable to curb the expansion of feral hogs until they made illegal to possess one.
It seems likely that the only way we will have a consensus to eradicate feral hogs is if the hogs experience an epidemic that threatens the human population, which is a real concern.
Hogs get trap savvy really fast to box traps (typically cheap to make and sell) so what works better is the traps that are large scale and circular in shape. There’s the $5k traps that can be set up with a camera and when the operator sees there’s enough hogs going in..can trigger the trap remotely. Traps typically get the young and the dumb and the dogs get the trap savvy adults. Shooting at them may work here and there but dogs and trap combo works the best. It’s a lot of work training the dogs and you always have to have back ups in case the dog gets injured or gets old, etc….that’s why most people don’t want to mess around with dog raising/working them….I wonder if they have thought about putting in the hottest hot wire surrounding the property? Hogs don’t like getting zapped just like people. Hot wire is cheap compared to installing hog proof fencing. The thing is you have to make sure there aren’t any plants next to the hot wire running down the electricity. Have to constantly make sure the plants are trimmed away from the wire.